


cut away

by Trell (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, Female Dean Winchester, Female Vessel Castiel, Season/Series 04, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dean watches mesmerized from where she’s sitting on the edge of the sink, heels braced against the cabinet door underneath.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	cut away

Blue-black locks fall onto dirty white plastic, tips ragged from being sliced through with a knife on one end and uneven from growing unchecked on the other. Dean watches mesmerized from where she’s sitting on the edge of the sink, heels braced against the cabinet door underneath.

Cas makes another sharp motion, slicing through a thick collection of strands in one swift move. She’s balanced on the edge of the bathtub, leaning in, Jamie Novak’s ill-fitting suit hanging off her like a bag.

At least Dean managed to convince her to take off the coat before she’d started. Cas had given her a flat look and shrugged the raincoat off her shoulders, letting it fall in a heap onto the grimy motel floor; and then she’d tread into the bathroom without another word, like she was— _ha, ha,_ Dean had thought blankly—on a mission from God.

And now here’s Cas, cutting away all of Jamie Novak’s long hair that had hung so delicately, messily past her shoulders. Dean thinks it must have been in a bun once, but Cas hadn’t spared it a second thought and it had fallen into disarray from running, fighting—flying? Dean doesn’t know if angels get windswept when they pop out of existence and lurch back in, but she thinks they have to, because that’s what Cas always looks like: like someone that’s been standing out in the wind, in a storm, battered by the elements but never carried away.

Another lock of black hair drops to the bottom of the tub, and Dean finds her breath (she hadn’t realized she’d lost it) and says, “Is this, like, symbolic?”

The hair’s cut to above Cas’s ear on the left, now, but still long where it’s thrown over her right shoulder, falling almost to the middle of her back. Castiel doesn’t turn or look back at Dean when she says, “Is it to you?”

“Um,” Dean says. “Only if you want it to be? Why are you doing it?”

“It was inconvenient.” Cas doesn’t say anything more, says it like that’s all there is to it, like this isn’t the first time Dean’s seen her do anything to her vessel save for mending bones and clearing away bloodstains.

Like she’s not cutting away the last sign that the body she’s wearing used to belong to one Jamie Novak, accountant, mother, human, loved. Jamie Novak, who had her own life.

Dean doesn’t know why it feels so significant. Dean had hardly met Jamie, after all; only long enough to watch her proclaim being chained to Castiel a nightmare, only long enough to have to watch Jamie see her wife get possessed by a demon and her daughter shining with grace. 

Long enough to watch Jamie give her life away for her child, submit to being Cas’s vessel _until the stars burn out,_ Cas had said.

There’s a guilt in Dean for not caring more, for caring only now that there’s a reminder of the loss, for caring about Cas being at her side more than she does about Jamie Novak’s ruined life. But in the end she’s not sorry, not really, and there’s Jamie Novak disappearing along with the locks of hair dropping one after another into the bathtub. 

Dean's self-loathing grows a little more.

From where she’s sitting, Cas says, “I’m upsetting you.” She doesn’t so much as turn her head. She’s pulled the remaining long half of Jamie’s hair back over her shoulder, is removing it with the same unwavering determination.

“Stop reading my mind,” Dean snaps, reflexive. “Yeah, I’m upset, but no, it doesn’t mean I want to discuss it.”

“You feel guilt about Jamie,” Cas presses. “You shouldn’t. She gave herself freely.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and drags a hand over her face, rubbing at eyes grainy with weariness, “I wouldn’t call giving herself up while watching her kid filled up by an angel that she called a nightmare ‘freely’.”

“She prayed for this,” Cas says, just as she had that night in the barn.

Dean snorts mirthlessly. “Have you ever heard of ‘informed consent’? Cool concept we humans have, where signing something’s not supposed to count unless we know exactly what it is we’re signing up for.”

“I told her,” Cas says, still without halting in her progress. Still without looking at Dean. Her low voice is quiet even in the resonant bathroom, the only other sound the shearing of the blade. “I told her everything, and if she disliked the experience after, it fails to matter in the eyes of our Father—as sorry as I am to have taken her life.”

“God’s a dick,” Dean says, bluntly. She doesn’t even know why she’s arguing, except that it feels right to do so. Maybe she’s trying to make up for her sins of intent by saying the right words; maybe she’s just tired of everything being so futile, of lives being broken and families shattered for the sake of a war most of them don’t even know.

Cas doesn’t answer, this time, just keeps at her task. Dean spends the minutes that tick past grinding her knuckles into her eyes until she sees stars.

“Dean,” Castiel says, and Dean opens her eyes, blinks away the black splotches left behind by the pressure.

This time she does feel her breath catch in her throat, visceral, like a punch to the sternum, heart-stopping. She stares.

Cas has turned at last, borrowed knife set carefully on the tub’s edge and palms braced against it. There’s no stray hairs on her suit jacket’s shoulders, not like there would be on a human that’s just had an impromptu hack-and-slash haircut— _angel mojo,_ Dean thinks distantly—and no trace of the dark cascade Dean’s grown so used to seeing frame her face. Not a single strand reaches past the upper tips of Castiel’s ears.

“Oh,” Dean says, and blinks, and keeps forgetting to breathe, because she’s always thought Jamie Novak was handsome but she’s never seen her look so—so suddenly, irretrievably _Castiel_ , harsh lines of her face accented instead of hidden, sharpened to match Cas’s piercing inhuman gaze.

“Is something wrong?” Castiel is asking, crease forming between her brows and the edges of her mouth pulling slightly down. Her expression has always tended towards the dour, but now she seems halfway between disappointed and confused, like she does when she’s stumbled into some human custom she just doesn't get.

Dean swallows, hard. And makes sure her lungs are working again. And says: “No—no. Not at all. It looks, uh . . .”

She’s a bad judge, and she’s biased, and _oh,_ the bangs that Cas hasn’t bothered to cut away are hanging into her eyes and over the bridge of her nose and Dean wants nothing more than to reach out, to brush the stray strands away, to touch—

Dean shuts the train of thought down ruthlessly. Cas is an _angel_ , a member of the host of heaven. Dean is a hell-scarred mess of a human, and those thoughts don’t belong here, not between them, not with the world careening towards its fiery end. “It looks great,” she finishes lamely.

Her mouth feels very dry.

If Cas notices her stumbling or hears her less-appropriate thoughts, she doesn’t give any sign. “I am glad,” Cas says, without a hint of inflection, “that it suits your approval.”

“Right,” Dean says. ‘Cause that’s a normal, safe thing to say.

Cas walks out of the bathroom, and Dean watches her go before casting a look back to the bathtub.

The locks of hair are gone, cleared away with a thought.

 _Bye, Jamie Novak,_ thinks Dean, and follows Castiel out, clicking the door shut behind her.


End file.
